THE printed media's role in Rugby League is crucial.

It is the media which gives Rugby League its profile, which is needed to help with attracting additional supporters, developing the game and attracting multi-national sponsors.

And it is important the media understands they have a responsibility to their readers by reporting correctly, and picking up on positive stories more so than the negative stories.

But there are a couple of sports over here that take up the bulk of the sports pages in the national newspapers - that's soccer and Rugby Union.

We're always clamouring for space and I think it is diabolical the space Rugby League gets.

Soccer obviously commands a fair amount of ink because it has the biggest supporter base. But I think Rugby Union appears in papers over here far more than it should, specially as their crowds are less than ours, and this is where I think we get a rough deal.

A lot of the scores in Rugby Union are lopsided and in these games the action is not great to watch. Rugby Union are starting to speed up their game now but most of the time in Rugby Union the spectators hold the ball more than the players because the ball's getting kicked into touch all the time.

Our sport is quick, aggressive, exciting, it's got high skill levels and has real spartan qualities. It's one of the best games in the world but yet in the Sunday paper I have Rugby League is lucky to get a little snippet.

I feel the people who are running the papers are people who have probably played Union at their respective schools and have followed Union, so the tendency is to gravitate towards Rugby Union.

We're leading into the crucial time of the year with the start of the season but yet Rugby League is not getting much coverage at all.

It is up to us to bring the editors to our games, show them what we've got, show them it's very fast and a great game as a spectacle to try and pinch some of the space given to other sports.

Back home in Australia Rugby League is the No.1 sport and it does have the profile to match. The back pages always lead with Rugby League and we're fortunate that way.

But I think definitely that the lack of coverage over here hinders the development of our game.

There are 55 million people in this country and kids are brought up on reading newspapers but if they don't see Rugby League in papers then they've no Rugby League idols to look up to. We constantly see the likes of Ryan Giggs and David Beckham in the papers and the kids want to emulate them and get where they are. But we just don't have that profile.

We're always going to struggle to knock soccer off pages because it is too well entrenched. But we've got to try and bite into some of their supporters.

We play at a different time of year to soccer now and I always thought that was going to be a positive for us. We've got to encourage the media to show soccer supporters there is an alternative in the summer, let soccer supporters know that Rugby League is a good spectacle.

On the elctronic media side Sky Television are doing a super job in lifting the game's profile with their brilliant coverage of the game. Unfortunately, they can't reach all the houses with not everyone receiving satellite television.

I think it has been a huge bonus for the game that the BBC are broadcasting two live Challenge Cup games at weekends this year, rather than one. This is giving the game the exposure it deserves.

Only more air time like this and competitive games on the field can raise the profile to help bring in multi-national sponsors.

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